"In a
throwback to the days of the Cold War
counterinsurgency campaigns, the Colombian Senate
recently passed a bill authorizing the nation's
security forces to wage war against the Colombian
people in the name of anti-terrorism...All military
and civilian contractors stationed in Colombia should
be withdrawn and the delivery of Blackhawk
helicopters scheduled for July should be postponed
until the Colombian government re-aligns its policies
and laws with the norms of international humanitarian
law, both on paper and on the ground." (1)

It is true that, in the
past, both Washington and its clients in the Colombian
government and military paid lip service to opposing
Colombian death squads. At the same time, it was known
that the death squads a) were U.S.-trained, b) were
advised by U.S. covert agents and c) were comprised of
soldiers from the official Colombian military.

Now, Mr. Leech reports,
the Colombian military is to be officially transformed
into one big death squad with a plan for "war
against the Colombian people in the name of anti-terrorism."

Barry Leech is right that we should
oppose all U.S. military 'aid' for Colombia as long as
the military engages in 'human rights abuses.' But what
does this mean? By its nature, the Colombian anti-drug
war has always been a war against the Colombian people.
It has always relied on abusing human rights, starting
with the particularly important right to stay alive.

This history of abuse, now
celebrated in a democratically endorsed plan "to
wage war against the Colombian people in the name of anti-terrorism,"
could not exist without the approval of
Washington's foreign policy planners. Because the
Washington foreign policy establishment is the true
constituency of the Colombian government. Take away
Washington, and in short order the Colombian puppet state
would collapse.

IS U.S. "MAKING A
MISTAKE" IN COLOMBIA AND AFGHANISTAN?

The U.S. Establishment
always tries to dominate the language of foreign policy
discourse. In this way, critics are maneuvered into
accepting premises which limit their field of view and
therefore the scope of their criticisms.

For example, Washington
argues that it is pouring almost a billion dollars a year
into military ''aid'' to Colombia in order to "win
the drug war". Similarly it claims it is giving $43
million more to the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan to
reward them for banning the cultivation of poppy plants
used to produce heroin and opium.

"Last week [Bush]pledged another
$ 43 million in assistance to Afghanistan, raising
total aid this year to $ 124 million and making the
United States the largest humanitarian donor to the
country." ('The Washington Post,' 25 May 2001)

Supporters and opponents
of Washington's policies tend to accept these claims
about the "drug war." Consequently the debate
is framed in Washington's terms: "Should the U.S.
give aid to anyone, no matter how foul, as long as this
helps the drug war?" If they accept this frame of
argument, critics are trapped into responses that assume
Washington is making a mistake, that it is letting itself
be used by monsters.

The premises involved in
this frame of argument are lies.

First, Washington is not
engaged in a drug war. That's public relations baloney.
Washington is the political sponsor of the key forces
behind the drug trade.

Second the war on drugs is
a cover for waging a real war against forces striving for
independence in strategic areas such as Colombia and,
more important on a world scale, the Balkans and the
Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union.

Third, Washington is the
creator and patron of the governing terrorists in
Afghanistan (the Taliban) and in Colombia. To say
Washington is 'aiding' these forces is like saying
farmers 'aid' their crops or parents 'aids' their
children.

THE DRUG INTERESTS ARE
IN CHARGE OF THE DRUG WAR

Despite all the rhetoric,
Washington is not interested in stopping the drug trade.
From Iran-Contra to the Afghan anti-Soviet war to the
Islamist terrorists currently attacking the former Soviet
states to the KLA to the Colombia death squads,
Washington's proxy armies are deeply and increasingly
involved in the drug trade. Drug gangs provide terrorist-military
training and produce vast sums of money. This money
enables Washington's proxy armies to mount formidable
campaigns against target countries without Washington
have to shell out impossibly large sums of money.

A 'Boston Globe' article (an excerpt is posted at the
end, see Footnote 4) states
that Washington's Kosovo Liberation Army is heavily
involved in a drug distribution system that starts in
Afghanistan and Pakistan and ends up in Western Europe.
This drug business involves 400 BILLION dollars a year. (Not
that the KLA gets all this money. But we are discussing
gross revenues greater than those of IBM, Microsoft and
Intel combined. And that's just the Afghanistan-to-Europe
trade.)

Washington sponsors and
protects this drug trade because drugs provide crucial
money and terrorist personnel for Washington's drive for
world domination.

The same is true in Latin
America. Take Washington's Colombian 'drug war' for
example. If this was aimed at stopping the drug business,
Washington would focus on penetrating and jailing the
powerful drug interests and their Establishment
connections. That is, not just the rich drug cartel
gangsters, but the gangsters-in-a-suit in big banks and
corporations:

"A more sensible U.S. policy
should also include a focus on drug factors closer to
home. For example, the Clinton Administration might
consider cracking down on U.S. and other Western
corporations involved in exporting to Colombia the
enormous quantities of the precursor chemicals
required to process raw narcotic plant material into
hard drugs. Drug processing, according to the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) is an extremely
"complicated" process, requiring "sophisticated
equipment and skills," as well as "expensive
chemicals" like potassium permanganate, ether
and acetone "that are harder to find and often
not manufactured in the processing country."
Those that bear the brunt of aggressive U.S. supply-side
drug policies in Colombia - peasant cultivators,
petty drug pushers, and the guerillas - are clearly
not the major players in the lucrative, transnational
narcotics industry. The U.S. should
also consider devoting funds to an in-depth
investigation of the major multinational banks and
companies involved in laundering billions of dollars
in drug revenues. If anything, the volume of
money laundering has grown in recent years even as
the U.S. public's consciousness of the problem has
declined.

"Alberto Galan, brother of murdered Colombian
presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, emphasized
the weakness of U.S. policy in not probing this link
between private corporations and drugs. Washington,
according to Mr. Galan, avoids "the core of the
problem. The economic ties between the legal and
illegal worlds. The large financial corporations. It
would make a lot more sense to attack and prosecute
the few at the top of the drug business rather than
fill prisons with thousands of small fish." (My
emphasis. Quoted from "Heading for Disaster,"
at http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/hemisphr.htm
)

Instead of going after the
big fish, Washington directs the 'drug war' against coca
and poppy fields and the poor farmers who cultivate these
fields in areas controlled by FARC, the Colombian
liberation army.

By destroying these
particular fields, the U.S. and its Colombian proxies
drive up the value of the coca and poppy controlled by
Washington's Colombian proxies, that is, by the military
men and their death squads who are intertwined with the
Colombian drug cartels and through them with major
financial interests which 'launder' billions in drug
profits.

To justify fighting a 'war
on drugs' against small farmers who (conveniently) live
in guerilla-controlled areas, Washington and the media
pedal the story that the FARC guerillas control the drug
trade. This is comic book-level propaganda. Washington's
motto should be, "A dumb public is a happy public."

"While the FARC undoubtedly generates wealth
through the "war taxes" it levies on drug
processors and traffickers, as well as through the
abduction of foreign corporate executives and wealthy
Colombians for ransom, there is no direct evidence
linking the rebels to the actual export of drugs to
the U.S. Available evidence reveals that among the
primary transporters of drugs are right-wing
paramilitary groups in collaboration with wealthy
drug barons, the armed forces, key financial figures
and senior government bureaucrats.

"The creation of the United Self-Defense
Groups of Colombia (AUC), the official title of the
loosely-connected paramilitary organizations formed
in the 1980s, was made possible in large part
through the private fortunes amassed through their
leaders earlier involvement in the drug trade.
The AUC, in fact, was outlawed in 1989 after
government investigations revealed that Pablo
Escobar, the notorious boss of the Medellin drug
cartel, had taken over one of its largest
paramilitary operations.

"The paramilitaries, composed of right-wing
extremists (including many military and police
officials) virulently opposed to the guerillas and
their sympathizers, have become a mainstay in Bogotas
anti-FARC campaign. While the AUC is personally
repugnant to President Pastrana, his efforts to curb
explicit collusion between the Colombian security
forces and the paramilitaries have been futile. So,
while army helicopters routinely attack coca and
poppy fields within rebel territory, major drug lords
and their paramilitary cohorts are able to conduct
their own drug operations with relative impunity."
("U.S. Policy Towards Colombia
About To Massively Veer Off-Track" at http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/hemisphr.htm
)

If
the U.S. government were "fighting the drug war"
to stop the export of drugs to the U.S., as it claims, it
would focus on those who organize and profit from the
export of drugs, instead of destroying the fields (and
poisoning the land, animals, and children) of poor
peasants who live in FARC-controlled areas.

The U.S. war against drugs
doesn't fight drugs. So what is its purpose?

REAL TARGET OF THE
"DRUG WAR"

For a hundred years
Washington's Latin American policies have aimed at
preventing the formation of a unified block of nations
that could challenge U.S. domination. Washington's
methods: repress and atomize; install anti-popular
oligarchs in small, weak states. Give 'aid' to these
little monsters who could not survive a year without Big
Daddy Monster to the North. In this fashion, Washington
has brought untold misery to the Latin American people.

Currently there is a
threat to these policies. The Chavez government in
Venezuela is politically independent. It has the temerity
- the audacity - to ask: "What is good for
Venezuelans?" And then there is the powerful FARC in
Colombia.

Check out a map. Venezuela
is northeast of Colombia. Colombia is south of Panama.
Both Colombia and Venezuela border Brazil, second most
populous country in the Americas. And Colombia is north
of Peru and Ecuador. Together, Colombia and Venezuela
constitute the northern cap of South America.

Both Colombia and
Venezuela have oil.

If the Colombian FARC
wins, it could mean a Venezuelan/Colombian/Cuban alliance
that would attract Latin American people and possibly
even some existing government(s), like a magnet.

Both Chavez in Venezuela
and the FARC in Colombia call for social justice and
national sovereignty. This is a compelling mixture;
contagious.

In response, Washington is
attempting semi-covertly to overthrow Mr. Chavez. At the
same time, Washington is escalating its atrocious counter-insurgency
campaign against the progressive nationalists in FARC.
The methods being used against FARC are as old as Rome
and as recent as Vietnam: punish and murder the ordinary
people who support the forces fighting the U.S. Make the
cost of independence prohibitive.

The present U.S. Secretary
of State, that nice guy, Colin Powell, is no stranger to
this strategy:

"In his 1995 autobiography, My
American Journey, Powell describes burning peasants
out of their huts in 1963, 'starting the blaze with
Ronson and Zippo lighters.'

"'Why were we torching homes and destroying
crops?' Powell asks rhetorically. 'Ho Chi Minh had
said the people were like the sea in which his
guerillas swam. We tried to solve the problem by
making the whole sea uninhabitable.'" (Quoted in
"Nobody's hero," at http://www.inthesetimes.com/web2504/edit2504.html)

It's one thing for Powell
to admit the murderous character of what the U.S. did in
long ago Vietnam. But were Washington to admit it was
using the same strategy in Colombia, most Americans would
be horrified. Hence the huge public relations campaign,
disguising the Vietnam-style operation going on right now
in Colombia behind the facade of a war against drugs.

IS WASHINGTON 'AIDING'
COLOMBIA AND THE TALIBAN?
OR IS IT IN FACT SUPPORTING ITS OWN CREATIONS?

The "Does the drug
war justify us giving aid to monsters?" argument
confuses the real relationship between Washington and
said monsters, such as the Colombian military/death
squads, and the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan.

This confusion is
expressed eloquently by Robert Scheer, who once edited
"Ramparts," the late great antiwar magazine. A
recent article by Mr. Scheer is entitled, "Bush's
Faustian Deal with the Taliban." If you remember
your Goethe, this would cast Junior as a lowly mortal who
makes a deal with the devil, a much more powerful figure.
Here's Mr. Scheer:

"Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S.
terrorists and destroy every vestige of civilization
in your homeland, and the Bush administration will
embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as
an ally in the drug war, the only international cause
that this nation still takes seriously.

"That's the message sent with the recent gift
of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan,
the most virulent anti-American violators of human
rights in the world today. The gift, announced last
Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in
addition to other recent aid, makes the United States
the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that
"rogue regime" for declaring that opium
growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the
Taliban's estimation, are most human activities, but
it's the ban on drugs that catches this
administration's attention." (http://www.bartcop.com/531taliban.htm)

Bob Scheer thinks the
Taliban are a monstrosity of indigenous origin. In his
view, it is outrageous for Americans to let themselves be
duped into helping these beasts simply because the beasts
have (supposedly) banned drugs. If America does this it
will become the Taliban's main sponsor. And so on.

The maternity bill? Over
six BILLION U.S. dollars. And that was 1980s money, mind
you, so we're talking about a much bigger bill in current
U.S. dollars. Washington is the monster parent of this
monstrous child.

To preserve the mental
equilibrium of Americans, the mass media tries to avoid
publishing evidence of Washington's Taliban patrimony.
Nevertheless, sometimes some of the truth slips out. Take
for example a 'NY Times' article published three days
after the U.S. bombed some facilities in Afghanistan:

"The Afghan
resistance [sic!] was backed by the intelligence
services of the United States and Saudi Arabia with
nearly $6 billion worth of weapons. And the territory
targeted last week, a set of six encampments around
Khost, where the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden has
financed a kind of 'terrorist university,' in the
words of a senior United States intelligence
official, is well known to the Central Intelligence
Agency.'

"The C.I.A.'s
military and financial support for the Afghan rebels
indirectly helped build the camps that the United
States attacked. And some of the same warriors who
fought the Soviets with the C.I.A.'s help are now
fighting under Mr. bin Laden's banner.

"From those same camps, the Afghan rebels, known
as mujahedeen, or holy warriors, kept up a decadelong
siege on the Soviet-supported garrison town of Khost.

"Thousands of mujahedeen were dug into the
mountains around Khost. Soviet accounts of the siege
of Khost during 1988 referred to the rebel camps as
'the last word in NATO engineering techniques.' After
a decade of fighting during which each side claimed
to have killed thousands of the enemy, the Afghan
rebels poured out of their encampments and took Khost."
(From 'New York Times,' August 24, 1998. For
more on this see 'Credible
Deception: The Times and the Sudan Missile Attack')

Six billion dollars. And that's what the
CIA admits spending. How much more did they spend that
they don't admit?

U.S. covert support for the Taliban has
continued throughout the middle and late 1990s, mainly
through Washington's junior partner, Saudi Arabia.

TALIBAN AID: PART OF THE
ATTACK ON RUSSIA

The Taliban aid package coincides with
Washington's increasing attacks on the former Soviet
Union in general and Russia in particular. The
current very public offer of $43 million in aid is a
destabilizing warning to the Central Asian states of the
former Soviet Union. The message is: you better work with
us, not Russia, or we can unleash the Taliban against you.

At the same time,
Washington holds out a carrot, offering to provide the
Central Asian Republics with military aid. The idea is to
offset Russian military ties and increase the U.S.
presence in these countries. By having a large contingent
of U.S. military (and therefore of course the CIA as well)
directly involved inside the Central Asian states,
Washington can select the best targets for bribes, thus augmenting the efforts of U.S.- funded "democracy
groups" which are presently setting up 'civil
society' Fifth Column
organizations in these countries.

If the U.S. can make these
countries dependent on US military aid (and training, and
of course spare parts) Washington can guarantee that
their weapons and military plans are insufficient to
defeat Taliban-connected terrorists. Moreover, Washington
can supply these Islamist terrorists with military
intelligence.

3)
Take the Emperor's Clothes challenge! We at tenc.net are convinced that U.S.
newspapers intentionally distort the news to whitewash
Washington's actions. Whether you agree with us, are
unsure, or would like to see our best evidence so you can
prove to yourself that we are just mouthing off, read the
detailed study of how the 'N.Y. Times' lied to its
readers about the August, 1998 bombing of a pill factory
in Sudan. The article is called 'Credible Deception: The Times and the Sudan
Missile Attack'and it can be read at http://emperor.vwh.net/articles/jared/sudan.html

3a) In countries all over the world,
the U.S. has set up "civil society" groups
which imitate the 'look' of local activist groups but are
in fact trained and funded by U.S. government agencies
like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
It was just such forces which overthrew the Miloshevich
government in Yugoslavia.

4) Washington pretends
to oppose drugs. But its favorite Balkans terrorist group
relies on the drug business for cash. Washington could
devastate the drug trade by simply arresting this
organization. That would easy to do because the
organization is the KLA. It was set up by Germany and the
U.S. and it is trained by "Western special forces,"
that is, by the U.S. and Britain)

Here's an excerpt from a
recent 'Boston Globe' article which cautiously - but
clearly - links the KLA to the drug trade.

"Interpol estimates that
Kosovo Albanians may control 40 percent of the
European heroin trade. In Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, they may have as
much as 70 percent of the market, according to the
estimates. Kosovars became Europe's heroin kingpins
by dominating the 'Balkan route,' a series of
roundabout highways that run from Turkey through
Bulgaria, the former Yugoslavia, Hungary, Slovakia,
the Czech Republic, Germany, and then, it is said,
into Austria. Four to six tons of heroin move along
this route annually, generating about $400 billion in
revenues.

"At the top of the drug-smuggling
hierarchy, according to Interpol, is a group of
gangsters known as 'The Fifteen Families,' who are
based in northern Albania, near the Yugoslav border.
Opium from Afghanistan and Pakistan is exported to
Turkey, where it is refined into heroin, and then
moved by Turkish gangs to the Balkans. There,
lieutenants of the Fifteen Families, operating from
anarchic border towns around ill-defined Balkan
borders, take over and administer the drugs' movement
across the continent.

"In cities across Europe,
smaller Kosovo Albanian gangs oversee storage, sale
and distribution. To avoid risk, they hire local
couriers, called donkeys or horses, to move the drugs
across borders. 'Heroin networks are usually made up
of groups of fewer than 100 members, consisting of
extended families residing along the Balkan route
from Eastern Turkey to Western Europe,' Ralf
Mutschke, assistant director of Interpol's Criminal
Intelligence Directorate, said in December, in
testimony to the US House of Representatives. The
large numbers of Albanian immigrants and refugees in
Europe provide fertile ground for drug gangs to
recruit members. 'For those emigrants ... the
temptation to engage in criminal activity is very
high, as most of them are young Albanian males, in
their 20s and 30s, who are unskilled workers and have
difficulties finding a job,' Mutschke said.

"Some Albanians say the drug
gangs have tainted their nation's reputation, and
have led to widespread prejudice against them. 'As an
honest Albanian this hurts me,' said Saimir Bajo, a
29-year-old film director who has lived in Prague for
five years. 'It gives us a bad image with the
Europeans. We are normal like any other nation, not
better, not worse.'

"But Kosovar involvement in
the drug trade, he said, fuels anti-Albanian
discrimination, creating 'invisible walls which we
cannot escape.' In 1997, Albania descended into chaos
when the collapse of a pyramid savings scheme brought
down the government and led to rioting and looting.

"From January to March 1997,
according to Interpol, outlaw groups seized hundreds
of thousands of assault rifles, machine guns, and
rocket launchers from military armories.

"The organized crime groups
mobilized to support the national cause during the
war in Kosovo, and that gave them so much political
cover that they were able to operate with near
impunity. 'Albanian organized crime groups are hybrid
organizations, often involved both in criminal
activity of an organized nature, and in political
activities, mainly relating to Kosovo,' Mutschke said.
He added that half of the estimated $400 million that
came into Kosovo from 1996 and 1999 is believed to be
illegal drug money. Vera Brazdova, chief prosecutor
in the Uka brothers' case, said telephone taps
revealed the two 'discussing the collection of money
for Kosovo.'

"Likewise, Petr Liska, the
narcotics detective who investigated the case, said
he was '100 percent certain' the two were sending
money to the Kosovo Liberation Army, although he
added that the allegation was difficult to prove.

"The Uka brothers had been
operating out of the western Czech city of Plzen for
years. But when Fiala cooperated with prosecutors in
exchange for a lighter sentence, police were able to
shut them down. In March, all three were convicted of
heroin smuggling. The Ukas deny the charges and are
appealing the verdict.

"In February 1999, months
before the Ukas were arrested, police in Prague
scored one of their biggest heroin busts to date,
arresting Princ Dobroshi, a high-level Albanian drug
lord. In Dobroshi's apartment investigators found
evidence that he had placed orders for light-infantry
weapons and rocket systems.

"Police said Dobroshi, who was
extradited to Norway where he had escaped from
prison, planned to purchase the weapons for the KLA.
Despite such victories, Czech police say they feel
outgunned by the drug smugglers. 'We are only
catching little pieces,' Liska said. 'They are a step
ahead of us."' (From 'A new drug route is traced
to the old Balkans anarchy,' by Brian Whitmore,
'Boston Globe,' 6/3/2001)

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